


Collateral Damage (Three Women That Karen Kosseff Never Met)

by Ruuger



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 22:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1581080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/pseuds/Ruuger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just this once, everybody lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage (Three Women That Karen Kosseff Never Met)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wendelah1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/gifts).



# Melissa

As she made her way down the brightly lit corridors of the hospital, Karen could feel fragments of memory crowding on the edge of her consciousness, teased by the sharp smell of disinfectant and illness. In her fifteen years as one of FBI's resident counselors, she'd visited a lot of hospitals; had acquired a lot of memories, both good and bad. Mostly it had been in her professional capacity to visit agents who had been injured on the job, but there were also sometimes the other cases, the ones that had nothing to do with the FBI. IIt did not technically fall under her domain, but she felt that she owed her patients - her colleagues, her fellow agents - her support even when Bureau did not require it from her.

She reached the end of the corridor and opened the door to the room where the nurse had told her Agent Scully was staying, but was surprised to find her sitting in a chair, reading a book, instead of resting in the bed. It took her a second to realise that the woman wasn't Scully, just someone who resembled her. 

She quickly glanced at the door to make sure she hadn't entered the wrong room, before addressing the woman.

"I'm sorry, I'm looking for Dana Scully? Is this her room?"

The woman looked up from her book. "Yes, she's just having a..." She paused, frowning. "-a CAT scan? Or maybe a CT scan? Something like that." She shook her head. "Dana was always so much better in these things." She set the book on the bed. "Are you a friend of Dana's?"

Karen held out her hand. "Karen Kosseff. I'm her colleague at the FBI." 

The woman's movements when she stood up and took Karen's hand were shaky and uncertain, like those of a child that was only learning to walk. 

"I'm Melissa, Dana's sister."

Melissa returned to her seat as soon as she she let go of Karen's hand, as if even that smallest movement has exhausted her. When she picked up her book again, Karen made note that it was a large print edition of novel she remembered seeing on the New York Times bestseller list. She realised that she must have stared at the book too long when Melissa held it out to her.

"It's quite good," Melissa said as Karen accepted the book and opened it at a random page, more out of politeness than of any real interest. _Nothing in this world happens by chance._

"Do you believe in God?" Melissa suddenly asked.

Karen closed the book and gave it back to Melissa.

"I can't say that I've ever really thought about it." It was a lie, and then again not. She'd never had to think about it herself, she'd heard enough evidence both for and against by listening to her patients.

Melissa nodded.

"I don't think that there's a God, as such, but I believe that there is something greater than us, a good will of some kind that looks over us. There has to be." She was quiet for a second, her hand idly caressing the spine of the book. "I was shot last year, by a man who was trying to kill Dana. I've heard that when people are hurt badly, they often try to find a reason for why it happened. Why this? Why me? But I never went through that. I knew why, it was because the man who shot me had mistaken me for Dana. But then when Dana got sick, I started thinking differently. That maybe _that_ was because of me. That maybe I was supposed to die in that shooting so that she could live."

She was still looking at her, like she expected her to answer, to agree with or validate what she had just said. Her therapist's instincts were already treating Melissa as if she was her patient, mentally going through the DMS-IV searching for possible diagnosis, while the rest of her brain was still trying to come up with something to say.

Suddenly Melissa laughed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to get so deep and depressing. I've just been thinking about this a lot and I can't really talk about with Dana, can I?" She shook her head. "And I don't really think that I was meant to die. It makes no sense. The universe is a beautiful place, and whatever it is that is looking over us, doesn't want to harm us. I have to believe that. But I still think that everything happens for a reason." 

There was a sound from outside, and when Karen turned to look, she saw a nurse pushing Dana in a wheelchair down the corridor. Melissa stood up and set the book back down on the bed. She headed towards the door but then paused, giving Karen one last look. "The shooting may have been random, but there's a reason why I survived.I think that I was saved because I was meant to be here, now, in this moment. Because the universe knew that Dana would need me."

# Diana

The click of her heels echoed from the bare concrete walls as she made her way across the dark parking garage. It was late at night and the garage was almost empty, her car one of the few still left parked there. She hadn't meant to work so late, but she'd wanted to catch up on her paperwork, and somehow a quick half an hour behind her desk had turned into an hour, then two hours, and three hours. In the end it had only been the sight of the late night security guard checking the offices that had reminded her to gather her papers and go home.

She'd never believed in ghosts or spirits or other supernatural phenomenon, but  
she couldn't help feeling the pressure of the darkness around her, like some malicious genius loci. From the corner of her eye she saw something move in the shadows between the concrete columns, and she hastened her steps without even thinking, before she realised that what she'd seen was a man and a woman standing by one of the cars, arguing in sotto voices.

As she came closer, she recognised the man as Agent Mulder. His companion - an older woman with dark hair and a deep grey power suit - also looked familiar, but as much as she tried, Karen couldn't put a name on the face. She nodded in greeting as she passed them, but they both ignored her, simply lowering their voices as they continued to argue. 

It wasn't until she reached her car that she suddenly realised where she'd seen the woman before. She turned around, just in time to see Mulder and the woman get into the car.

Karen never actually met Diana Fowler, since the agent had been assigned to one of her colleagues, but she'd seen her a few times at the corridors and cafeteria. Had known her well enough to recognise her name when her unfortunate death had been reported on the common mailing list.

Her own keys forgotten in her hand, Karen watched the cars pass her. Fowler looked older than she had in the photograph on the memorial the the wall of the cafeteria, but Karen was certain that it was still her. For a moment their eyes met, but then the car turned behind a column, taking the ghost with it.

# Cassandra

These days, Karen often found herself thinking about her sessions with Dana Scully back when she'd still worked for the FBI. There was one session that she kept going back to, right after Scully's abduction, where the agent had haltingly explained what she thought had happened to her during her absence.

Aliens. Tests. Spaceships. 

Karen had written it down in her session notes as a dissociative amnesia triggered by the trauma of being abducted by Duane Barry, combined with hallucinations and false memories that could be chalked down to Agent Mulder's influence. It was the most logical explanation, and Scully as a medical professional had mostly agreed with her analysis, preferring to discuss the less fantastical aspects of her trauma in subsequent sessions.

But now as she watched the news, it seemed almost naiive how she had dismissed the story as just a figment of imagination, no more true than the rumours she'd heard on the office corridors about The X-Files and Spooky Mulder's quest.

_...the extra-terrestrial life forms discovered last year in Siberia and Alaska..._

The evidence was now there, even though some still denied it, most recently having taken the form of the woman currently being shown on the news. 

_...some kind of an alien-human hybrid, a product genetic tampering..._

Karen poured herself another cup of coffee and settled down to watch the report.

The woman's body body was covered with burn scars, her face a frozen mask of molten flesh, but her eyes were strong as she stared at the camera in the still image on the screen. The eyes of a woman who'd fought and suffered, but who hadn't given up, even though Karen was certain she must have sometimes longed for death. 

_...according to CDC the vaccination will also be available within just a few weeks..._

But her life was now everyone's life, her blood the key to the cure for the infection that had threatened wiped out whole continents.

And as the news report ended and Karen turned off the TV, she couldn't help thinking just how the death - or life - of just one human being could be so important. How different the story would have been, if Cassandra Spender hadn't survived.

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic turned out the be a bit more meta than I originally meant for it to be. Sorry. :)


End file.
